Changing Woman Initiative Blog

​​Waking Dreams before Dawn,Ancestors Talking to YouPick up your feathers,Use the MedicineSing Your Heart Songs,Child of the CosmosYou are Ready.

​Making the leap to answer your Ancestors calling is probably one of the hardest and scariest things any person can ever do. I know, it happened to me. The fears pulling at my mind and heart around a decision to stay or move, to act or be still, to walk the path that was slowly presenting it self to me or to ignore it and walk the other way. I was living a good life already, what if this dream, this vision, this passion in my heart took that all away….but what if it didn’t? What if what felt impossible is possible?

The waking dreams continued over 5 years, like clockwork at 3:00 AM my eyes would open and I would look out the window to be greeted with darkness. At first it was mulling over whether or not I should act, then it changed to idea’s lining up in my mind on how to make it possible, then it transformed into sitting up and writing down these ideas in my journal. I began to get excited. I started sharing my ideas with my husband, who immediately shot them down with skepticism. He asked me questions like “What about our children?” “What about time with our family?” “what about….” I let his words sit with me for a bit. Everything he was asking me, were questions I had already asked myself. What about our children? What about our family? This BIG dream I was talking about would certainly impact them.

As a woman who has found healing through the transformation of motherhood, I was going risk my most valuable treasures, which was time and attention to my family. Was it worth it? Who would benefit? Who would not? More questions, more worries, more doubt. I knew people who had swung for the fence and lost more than their shirts in the process. I couldn’t lose them to this. I needed to think about this more.​Whether your most valuable treasure is your home, family, community, integrity-it will be what your measure all your decisions against in pursuit of your dreams. They say the price of doing the impossible is high, it’s true. It is. Nobody knows what’s most valuable to you, only you know that. Realizing your dream is a gift, that is true. People can go through their whole lives and not know their purpose, but rather accept to drift through this world in search of warmth by those on their life path. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but I would like to believe we are all here for a reason. Whether we are leading change or reinforcing it, your important and you have a purpose.

The courage people talk about when you decide to go for it is really the courage to face yourself. To face the potential of failure, to face the trauma you still carry in your body that has not healed yet, and to be humble with yourself-that you don’t know what you don’t know. You will meet that courage at every turn and decision you make and soon it will be like your old friends. You will look at what’s in front of you and leap with your eyes open, rather than with them closed.

​Part of realizing your dream and setting your sights on achieving it, is letting self-discovery be part of that journey. Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Perhaps up to this point, you have been successful at not putting yourself in situations that challenge your beliefs and have been able to detour yourself from real growth, because you haven’t had the courage to face yourself yet. It’s that courage and maybe even stubbornness that will flame your dream fire into reality. Don’t shy away from being and feeling uncomfortable, it’s growth happening

​You will have many conversations with people who will question your path and commitment. More importantly, you will meet people who will question the feasibility and reality of the BIG dream. Get used to being challenged, questioned, evaluated, measured- all those things that happen when those listening to you don’t trust your commitment and devotion to the path you’re on. Get comfortable with being questioned. If you’re like me, dig your heals and make sure you know the ins and outs of that BIG dream. It will prepare you for when you are standing in front of your community sharing it with them and they start to fire off questions to you about the work you are doing.

​As I pursue this birth center dream, my act of doing the impossible. I have certainly had to face myself. I have had to revisit past trauma that has not healed and look at how it was impacting my ability to share this dream with everyone. I am naturally an introvert and enjoy my alone time, recharging my inner child with art, poetry, and creative writing. I basically confront my anxiety of talking to large groups of people monthly. I have had to learn the business of birth, spending a lot of time working on spreadsheets and developing contracts, rather than basking in the lovely glow and magic of birth. It’s a tradeoff for sure, I came to midwifery with the understanding that I would be part of many magical moments with families. Now I am spending a lot of time creating a larger space to share that magic with all families.

It is certainly like a wild fire when you begin to glow with that brilliant light inside.(Oh…how desperately our world is in need of you and that light right now.)You begin to meet likeminded individuals and then your light together ignites a bright fire that is hard to miss. Suddenly, your dream becomes everyone’s dream.

Along with the beauty of your ignited and beautiful soul from listening to your ancestors call you into your life path, you will feel a shift happen within you. You might not notice it right away, because you are so focused on the work you are doing, but take the time to bask in where you are now and where you were then. Whether it is an inch or a mile from where you started, you made a leap of faith to go for it, that is BIG.

​If you are reading this now and feeling afraid to make the important decisions in your life that prevent you from your life path. Please know I have been there. I chose to accept my calling and listen to the ancestors. I have lost friends, made friends, burned out, lit back up, and am still going for it. I wanted to share this important message with you and I hope it reaches the far reaches of your spirit that hasn’t been spoken to in a while. Go for it. Dream Big. Just go for it.

Midwives know that it is through water, in all of its forms, that new life is brought into this world.

Much of our job is spent monitoring water: hydration, urine analysis, vomit, and, most importantly, the water in which a new life grows and strengthens.

This amniotic water plays a central role in our relationship with a developing life. We have to make sure there isn’t too much, or too little. We examine the color, the smell, the consistency. We pay careful attention to the way in which a growing baby interacts with the water it lives in, that cords are not tangled by aquatic acrobatics, that the little one is completely surrounded by water so that the sac it is contained by doesn’t restrict developing limbs. That when the bag breaks, and water trickles out like drizzling rain on cloth or bursts forth like a river from a dam, nothing gets caught or positioned where it shouldn’t.

We know firsthand the dangers of infected and contaminated water.

When outside toxins are introduced into the uterus, and pass through the protective bag into the water, the health and lives of mother and baby are in real danger. Maternal temperature starts to rise- heart and respiratory rates increase. Baby’s heart rate starts to rise in response to the stress and direct exposure to infection. With this stress, baby’s anal sphincter loosens and feces are introduced into the water that swirls in and around their lungs. The water, formerly sterile and literally life-inducing, begins to turn color, becomes foul smelling and toxic. Babies can and have died as consequence of infected water.

​Water is holy to midwives.

Water is our first medicine, a key part of our physical make-up. In the Bdewakantunwan Dakota creation story, humanity came to be at the junction of two great rivers. Their colliding forces helped to carve out the earth necessary for the creation of the human body, and from that place, Dakota people were born. Modern humans are created the same way: two fluids colliding to create life.

This Dakota site of genesis resides in a place still named for the power of its water: Mnisota Makoce, translated by my grandfather as “land where the waters reflect the skies.” The image it invokes is that of the early morning, with the mist rising off the water as the sun’s first rays begin to peak over the horizon. In Dakota, we have a word for this mist: “anptaniya,” or “the breath of the dawn.” This is the first hint of the power that awakes with the rising of the sun. Fire, greeted, purified and awakened by water.

From the time I was little, I was instructed in the importance of water. My geographical knowledge of my nation’s territory was marked by rivers. I grew up overlooking the Minnesota River valley, where the Yellow Medicine River joins the first great tributary of the Mississippi. Between ethanol plants draining the water table, farm chemical run-off contaminating the river and the utter destruction of the wetlands, people cannot eat the fish or swim for long in the river anymore. The river my grandmother speaks of, the one she used to play in as a girl whose water was so clean she could see the bottom and drink from it, is gone. The water wars here began a long time ago.

​Water is holy to midwives.

Lately the news has been filled with people dealing with the dangerous consequences of contaminated water. From the lead-contaminated water poisoning the children of Flint, Michigan, to cancer caused by PFOA contamination in the water of Hoosick Falls, New York, to Newark public schools giving lead- contaminated water to their entire student and staff population, safe water is becoming an issue in the American national media. Sadly, as Indigenous people, this is not new for us: water contamination as consequence of uranium mining, nuclear waste facilities, fracking, oil spills and outdated public works systems is and has been a lived reality for many Indigenous nations for the past several decades.

The results of this deliberate negligence are plain to see: increased rates of rare cancers, lead and heavy metal poisoning, radiation poisoning, birth defects. All of this on top of the perinatal health disparities that already exist because of the historical legacy of genocide and colonization, indigenous midwives have much to fear when we consider the future of our nations and the health and well-being of the babies we are trusted to safeguard.

Colonization and genocide are not words that I take lightly. I was fortunate to grow up amongst groups of Indigenous scholars, to whom my family belonged, and was a part of the conversations outlining the exact nature of the horrific crimes perpetrated in the name of God, in the name of America, in the name of progress. Colonization and genocide were never buzzwords to me, but ideas that haunted my steps from the time I was a little girl, and I saw the hypocrisy and tactics used to keep people like me oppressed and complacent. It was through the work of Fanon and Memmi, LaDuke and Deloria, that I came to midwifery.

Not only did I see the obvious ways in which Indigenous mothers and babies were attacked, tortured and murdered, I saw the more insidious ways. The way traditional food systems were destroyed in favor of western diets leading to the rise of food based diseases. The way new religions undermined feminine power, imposed the idea of struggle in birth as sin, and called traditional medicine and women’s knowledge witchcraft and devil’s work. The way in which the obstetric war on midwifery targeted specifically midwives of color, and confined pregnant women to lives away from walking, swimming, or squatting. The way in which the Allotment Act, the Relocation Act and the boarding school systems preventing extended family networks from supporting new families and passing on crucial knowledge. The way first farming, then logging, then mining, then railroad, then chemical companies began to rape and contaminate the landscape, including all who lived on it, including Indigenous babies.

The more I have seen, through the eyes of a midwife, the eyes of a Dakota woman, the more enraged I have become.

​Water is holy to midwives.

My family and I went to Standing Rock. Friends and family live there, directly downstream of where the Dakota Access Pipeline construction is planned. We crossed the Missouri River late at night, watched it sparkle below us, utterly vast in the darkness, reflecting stars in the shifting water.

The force of the camp, mighty in numbers and intention, was truly awe-inspiring. I had doubted I would ever see such a display of Indigenous strength here in my lifetime. Looking at the children running around, young people riding horses through tipi lodges, old grandmas chatting as they set up their tents, I started to cry. I cried again when I saw young women leading a chat of “Mni Wiconi, Water is Life” next to grandmothers holding a sign saying “We Are Unarmed,” facing down riot cops in the streets of Bismarck. I cried when my son clung to me in fear from the uniformed people sent to quell the restlessness of the Indians.

As Indigenous peoples, as Dakota people, we understand that “Mni Wiconi” is not some fluffy abstract concept designed to fuel some hokey pseudo-spiritual practice. We understand that clean water is important, because all life hinges on its existence. We understand that while clean water has the power to heal, contaminated water has the power to kill. We also understand that each oil pipeline that has gone through has contaminated untold volumes to water, and killed much of the life surrounding those spills. The risk of contamination to a water source that so many people depend on to live is simply too great to be allowed to continue.

As midwives, we hold water to be holy, a sacred vessel for life. As midwives, it is our professional, ethical and spiritual obligation to stand up for the protection of water. Because we know, if water is contaminated, it is only a matter of time before the infection becomes deadly.Unkitamakoce k’a oni unkitawapi- for our land and way of life.

From the illegally occupied territory of Mnisota Makoce. Wicanhpi Iyotan Win Autumn Cavender-Wilson is Wahpetunwan Dakota from Pezihutazizi K’api Makoce (Upper Sioux Community). She is a certified midwife, Dakota language revitalization worker, a member of the Anpao Duta Okodakciye, and a fierce decolonization activist. She lives with her husband in the Minnesota River valley and they are raising their son to understand the importance of water.

“The protection of our health, lands, resources including air and water, languages, cultures, traditional foods and subsistence, sovereignty and self-determination, and the transmission of our traditional knowledge and teachings to our future generations are inherent and inalienable human rights. These rights are affirmed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other international standards, and must be upheld, respected and fully implemented”

​A worldview that is shared among Indigenous peoples and communities, are that we are connected to the land. We are taught through the cycles of rebirth, through the changing seasons, through life and death, that we hold great responsibility to protect the things that which give us life. We are caretakers and children of Mother Earth and Father Sky. Recounting prayers said to “rebalance” our spirits, offerings are given, spiritual places named, and the holy people called on for help. A natural order and structure has long been established through our clan systems and healing practices, which are best explained as our “Life Way” teachings. It is no surprise that Indigenous people are fighting to protect our natural resources, from pollutants like oil, heavy metals, and other contaminants that continue to leave their footprints in our DNA. At the heart of this resistance against environmental violence and body sovereignty- are Indigenous women.

In the Navajo culture, Changing Woman is a female spiritual entity that personifies the life force of the Universe. She is responsible for the continuation of life AND is the protector of what she has created. Most traditional Navajo women have names that contain the word Baa’, meaning “female warrior,” as a female warrior, she is expected to protect her family and home.

Historically, patriarchal systems of oppression and gender hierarchies have pushed Indigenous women out of their leadership roles within their communities by placing less value on childrearing, and reorganized traditional governments by instituting laws that transformed marriage, property rights, and family lineage. Despite repeated efforts to displace Indigenous women from their key roles in their community’s, it is this very resistance through the continuation of cultural traditions, family ties, protection of natural resources, and culturally rooted body sovereignty & reproductive rights, that have contributed to Native people’s survival. As I see it, Indigenous women are the life force and are vital to the survival of Indigenous tribes.I believe it is patriarchal thinking that seeks to divide and separate us from the traditional teachings, that which has sustained us for so long. The thinking that we are all connected. The knowing that what affects the earth, affects us as well. Indigenous worldviews make the connection between the land and our bodies. As that the Earth is a living feminine entity requiring respect and protection.​With our changing landscapes and growing populations, living in industrialized areas with oil pipelines crisscrossing our rivers, fracking, coal mining, and soils becoming demineralized, the health of our communities is at the frontline of this battle over resources. American Indian communities have already experienced long term health damage from Uranium mining, and are now left with contaminated soils, ground and surface water and hunting grounds. The health affects as a result of this continued exposure over time has been documented as bone cancer, lung cancer, and impaired kidney function.

​Katsi Cook, a Mohawk midwife has made this connection between women’s bodies and the environments we live in.

“In 1985, Katsi helped with the creation of the Akwesasne Mother's Milk Project. The project was designed to "understand and characterize how toxic contaminants have moved through the local food chain, including mothers' milk," also stating that another goal was to get woman within the community to learn how to apply science in their everyday lives. The research project was funded by the U.S. Congress, and studied 50 new mothers over several years. The project showed a 200% greater concentration of PCB's in the breast mild of mothers eating fish from the St. Lawrence River near the reservation as opposed to the general population.Mohawk mothers, much to their outrage, were told to continue breast feeding by Mohawk officials despite the project's finding. Katsi stated, "Our traditional lifestyle has been completely disrupted, and we have been forced to protect our future generations....Although we are relieved that our responsible choices at the present protect our babies, this does not preclude the corporate responsibility of General Motors and other local industries to clean up the site."

​Like many, I watch the events unfold in North Dakota, as the Standing Rock Sioux tribe block the Dakota Access Pipeline, through peaceful protest, which started April 1, 2016. Environmental violence of this nature has widely been ignored by the media and like many, I have been following these events through Facebook and personal accounts of those who have gathered to protect the water. The Dakota Access Pipeline is intended to stretch across 1,168 miles, while transporting 570,000 barrels of crude oil each day from North Dakota to Illinois. The proposed pipeline route crosses under Lake Oahe, which is half a mile up from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and threatening the Missouri River. Additionally, 380 archeological sites will be desecrated along the proposed pipeline route.

Over a 100 tribes have come together to peacefully protest and protect the water and these sacred sites. Today, like so many times in our lives as Indigenous people we are called on to protect the land and the water. I am not surprised that 50% of the protesters in Standing Rock are women and children. As in the past and now the present, women are responsible for the cultural survival and physical survival of their people. They are exerting their roles as leaders to protect our most sacred resource –water.The expression of Indigenous feminism is to protect our precious resources and in doing so protects our culture, community, and future generations. The relationship between reproductive justice, environmental violence, indigenous feminism, reproductive health, environmental health, and midwifery are all connected and are part of the same corn stalk. As that the corn is a symbol of our lives and fundamental to the survival of our people. ​The profound out pouring of support for the land and water protectors at Standing Rock is worthy of notice. Please know local organizations in each tribal community are also working hard to protect the land and water near you. If the actions of Standing Rock strike a soft spot in you and you wish to act on those emotions please rally and march with us in Window Rock, Arizona, September 10, 2016.

“We all carry a piece of the puzzle-if we come together, we can piece back the puzzle that was scattered by colonization. There is no such thing as no culture, story, language-it’s not lost it’s out there and everyone has a piece of it.”

Maria Cambell

Indigenous Midwifery as an Expression of SovereigntyMothers of the Nations: Indigenous Mothering as Global Resistance, Reclaiming and Recovery, 2014

Last year Changing Woman Initiative was a primary organizer for the Indigenous Midwifery: Ancestral Knowledge Keepers Gathering, which was offered as a pre-conference to the 2015 Midwives Alliance of North America conference in Albuquerque, NM. Our hopes for this gathering was to create an opportunity for Native American midwives across the country to connect and to give voice to the work they were doing in their own communities. However, like many planned events, this gathering took on a spirit of it’s own. Issues that we have not been confronted with before began to surface, issues that we were not prepared to deal with spoke loud and clear. We began to get a lay of the land and the state at which the spirit of Indigenous midwifery was in. As we came together, with hope in our hearts and with a deep need to connect with women who understood our fight, we carried with us, the pain from the disruption of traditional birth knowledge. We told stories of our fragmented communities and the medicalization of birth with the direct marginalization of Indigenous midwifery. With our medicines for healing, we came together carrying much anxiety, hopes, fears, and unfortunately this created more deterioration of ties between women, rather then strength and unification.​It has taken several months of reflection to understand that we have such a long way to go to reclaim our places in birth again. At the time, we looked to our Aboriginal sister’s in Canada for guidance, as that they were years down the road from us, but where we did not look was to our sister’s to the South, West, and East of us. In looking to the four directions for healing, our world has opened up, in this came understanding that indigenous midwifery worldwide is experiencing the very same things we are, dispossession of land, fragmentation of family, medicalization of birth, western beliefs and frameworks that don’t incorporate our way of healing, our way of birthing, mothering, and living on the territories that feed us.

Today as Indigenous midwives, we are all re-constructing our roles in our communities again, re-constructing frameworks that reflect our methodologies, re-constructing our governance, even re-constructing ourselves as that we have each survived deliberate separation from our traditional life way teachings and have unknowingly integrated into a system that does not value us as knowledge keepers. It is for this very reason I hold my elders high, women who have carried the spirit of Indigenous midwifery through the years, despite the dehumanizing frameworks they too have had to be apart of to care for their communities. I hold them high, I cry tears of joy that they are still here. I also think about the future. I think about the future of Indigenous midwifery, although each of us are scattered around the globe, fighting for the right to carry our women’s medicine…we are one drumbeat together.​This gathering highlighted common threads of internal racism and inequality that has woven itself into the fabric of indigenous midwifery, all of which we have been all trying to combat individually in our home communities. It also became apparent that the branding and professionalism that midwifery took, has created divides larger then we could imagine. These realizations, perhaps were not everyones’s experience, rather they were identified as the “unnamable forces” that were keeping us from being unified, organized, and hindering much needed progress. The positive aspects of the gathering were that Indigenous midwifery was very much alive in our communities. Additionally, despite some differences, we very much wanted to be in ceremony together…. In what space would we be able to share our women’s stories openly and unapologetically, to share salves, herbs, and teas? So…how do we as Indigenous midwives begin fulfilling our obligations for promoting a much-needed in-depth transformation to meet the needs of our communities? ​As we continue to implement measures to eradicate racist stereotypes and perceptions of who we are as birth keepers, the time is now to acknowledge Indigenous midwives as individuals whom have social and political rights. The CEDAW proposal, which “urges State parties to acknowledge that the subordination of indigenous women is due to ethno-cultural, gender and class mechanisms of oppression, rooted in colonization processes and systematic, structural relations of inequality, affirm that the individual and collective rights of Indigenous women have been denied.”(Draft CEDAW, 2014). This statement outlines recommendations to State parties to ensure the integrity of the rights of indigenous women, globally, and also outlines that the sexual and reproductive health be rooted in ancestral knowledge systems.

​​Partnerships

It is our pleasure to work with Hermane Hayes-Klien, the founder of Human Rights in Childbirth on the Global Indigenous Midwifery CEDAW Project. The Global Indigenous Midwifery CEDAW Project is intended to elevate the voices of and create a platform for Indigenous women and midwives, about the human rights issues they are facing in their communities on all continents; specific to maternity care, sexual and reproductive health. Through collaboration with Indigenous groups worldwide, the Global Indigenous Midwifery project intends to submit a draft of recommendations to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), regarding the human rights of Indigenous women and midwives worldwide. The working document supports and reflects consensus among Indigenous women and midwives world-wide, that the collective rights of indigenous women have been denied. Universal human rights assert that people can be united across cultural and political positions over common rights without discrimination and in working with Hermane and the Human Rights in Childbirth organization; we hope to create partnerships across the globe that will create ripples of change locally.

More importantly, we hope through the Global Indigenous Midwifery CEDAW Project, that it can be used to achieve the millennium development goals. 1) Reduce maternal mortality through ensuring access to skilled birth attendants, 2) achieving universal access to reproductive health, 3) creating healthcare delivery systems that reflect cultural beliefs and customs.

Through taking on this leadership role with our Indigenous midwifery sisters worldwide, we hope to create a foundation for governing systems that transcend boarders. We want to acknowledge the women’s organizations from Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Nepal, Canada and Guatemala, all of whom have laid the groundwork for our nations in the draft CEDAW document. We will be actively working in the coming months, to coordinate working groups, seeking funding, and speaking publically about this work being done with Human Rights in Childbirth.

This important work could not come at a better time, as that May 5th is the International Day of the Midwife. As we celebrate this day with our global sisters, we look to the future of Indigenous Midwifery.

If you would like to be apart of this important work, please send us your information. ​

Excited to share our first blog post today. We are sharing an article that Founder Nicolle L. Gonzales, CNM wrote for the SQUAT Birth Journal, Issue 22. We hope to share our journey and progress with you through this blog, as well as feature writing from Indigenous women around the world about the issue their communities are facing.

BlessingsChanging Woman Initiative

Despite growing up in a “modern” Navajo family, participation in ceremonies and community gatherings like pow-wows have always been a part of my life. From the time that I was born the teachings of my Dine’ ancestors have always surrounded me, so it makes sense that midwifery called to me. However, reconnecting with my ancestral teachings through midwifery took its own path.

Growing up, there was a common thread of advice passed on through my female relatives: “Don’t go to Indian Health Services to have your baby.” In the community I grew up in, Waterflow, NM, Navajo women had the option to birth at the local Indian Health Service hospital or at a neighboring private hospital. Although I had heard some stories about my female relatives’ birth experiences and the racial inequalities they experienced, the thought of birthing in a humane and culturally centered way never occurred to me until I entered midwifery school. It was during this time that I began to talk to my elders about our traditional midwives and our cultural birth practices. I would ask, “where were you born?”

Our rich history as Dine’ women began to reveal itself to me and I began to see how our current healthcare delivery system had woven itself into the fabric of our birth experiences. Since the establishment of Indian Health Services, and long before, Native American women have experienced purposeful mainstream integration and separation from traditional “life way” teachings. During the early 20th century the Bureau of Indian Affairs sought to intervene in the care of preschool age children through the implementation of “scientific motherhood.” This was lead by white female field matrons who were sent to Native American communities in the Southwest to show mothers a more civilized way to care for their children. The goal of this campaign was to reduce infant mortality.

Like our African American sisters, Native American women suffered unconsented sterilization at the hands of a health-care delivery system that was supposed to, as put forth by the Snyder Act of 1921, “relieve distress and conserve the health of Indians.”1 A 1976 report from the US General Accounting office found that over 3,000 Native American women were sterilized without their consent in the early 1970s alone; it wasn’t until the late 1970’s that legal requirement for informed consent for federally funded hysterectomies and tubal ligations was required.

Today, as an act of reproductive justice, Native American women across the country are reclaiming their reproductive rights through the restoration of ancestral teachings and ceremonies of womanhood. For those of us who have been awakened through birth, through motherhood, through midwifery, history has taught us to recognize and question the motives of post-colonial patriarchal thinking. Recognizing that healing ourselves begins with returning to our cultural life way teachings is the pathway to wellness and is the work of Changing Woman.

To understand the depth of Dine’ wisdom, it’s important to know it has many levels of understanding. Everything has meaning and intention. There is a natural order which includes attention to the trajectory of growth in all things. There is also this understanding of duality in relationships and an innate understanding that the world has it’s own sacred geography. In addition to respecting the four basic elements, there is an additional element that is recognized and respected, it is vibration.​ Changing Woman, in our Dine’ teachings, is the ultimate woman and mother. She grew from infancy into puberty in four days and birthed the first set of twins. She is also a central figure in our healing ceremonies, like the Kinaalda coming-of-age ceremony. Like many Dine’ adolescents, my coming-of-age ceremony marked my transformation into womanhood. I remember sitting on a Pendleton blanket in our family Hogan with my feet tucked under my pleated blue velvet skirt, while having my hair brushed with dried grass. This ceremony is held to mark the end of adolescence and the beginning of womanhood for young Navajo women after their first menstruation. Over a four day period, wisdom through stories of womanhood is shared while grinding corn and preparing ceremonial food to be shared with the community. The true purpose of this ceremony is for the restoration of feminine energy and fertility on earth.

​As a Dine’ midwife, our life way teachings are what inform the way I work with families. I recognized early on in my career that the ceremonial aspect of birth and motherhood were missing from women’s experiences in the hospitals. It also felt unnatural to me to work with Native American families in hospitals and clinics where the aspects of indigenous wellness and healing were not present during their care. Through my own introspective observations, the only way that I felt that Native American women were going to reclaim their birth rights was to develop an initiative to do so.​Changing Woman Initiative, a developing non-profit, that took its first breath in the fall of 2014. It was developed in the likeness of Changing Woman, to renew indigenous birth knowledge through holistic approaches and community empowerment. Through the creation of a freestanding birth center that reflects Native American healing and wellness frameworks we hope to restore feminine power through birth to Native American women. Healing ourselves and our communities from centuries of colonization and discourse doesn’t happen quickly, which is why one of our first steps was to create an opportunity for Native American women to tell their birth stories. We hosted a four day digital storytelling workshop in early June, 2015. Seven Native American women from the surrounding tribal communities in Northern New Mexico participated. They each developed their own digital story about their birth experiences and what their experiences were with the current healthcare system. We also understand the vital and important role indigenous midwives play in their communities and are actively working to support our community healers through creating a space to share knowledge. Along with Native Youth Sexual Health Network, Tewa Women United, Midwives Alliance of North America, and Young Women United, we hosted a two-day Native American midwives gathering in October of 2015.

We are presently starting to work with our Native American communities in Northern New Mexico to participate in strategic planning to develop a traditional Native American birth center. From what we know, this will be the first in the United States. We value the participation of the communities this birth center will serve, so we are taking the time to respectfully gather community stakeholders to discuss the needs of their communities. One of the challenges we face as a developing organization is working within a financial paradigm where managed care facilities and insurance companies drive costs and access to certain services. All the more reason we are taking our time to develop a sustainable plan. To financially support our efforts, we are fundraising as well as applying for grants continue to our important work. Like many developing grassroots organizations appropriate funding is challenging. Philanthropy in Indian Country is not fully supported, as that financial investment is viewed as “risky.” This is been one of our major challenges. We hope that as our organization grows, we will help pave the way for more Native American organizations and investment in Indian Country will no longer viewed as “risky.”

It’s important to remember our reproductive history and know we have come a long way. We need to continue to develop collective revolutionary paradigms that nurture cultural preservation of womanhood in our Native communities. I look forward to the day that the healing smells of cedar and the sounds of family fill the space of a birth room and birth is treated like a ceremony again. By ushering in a new era of women and babies who have access to the natural healing herbs and indigenous wisdom, we begin to achieve wellness. The Changing Woman Initiative is a symbol of the innate feminine energy that Native women carry within their wombs and to the ceremonies they are a part of. We aim to restore indigenous birth rites within Native American communities where women have been separated from their ceremonial teachings of womanhood. We look forward to leading this revolution for change with our Indigenous sisters across the country.

Author: Nicolle L. Gonzales is a Certi ed Nurse Midwife (CNM) from the Navajo Nation. She graduated from the University of New Mexico, Nurse-Midwifery program in 2011 and now resides in San Ildefonso Pueblo with her husband and three children. She is the founder of the developing non-pro t Changing Woman Initiative. Throughout the years she has done numerous speaking engagements on cultural safety, integration of traditional wisdom in women’s health, and she is currently working with Mid- wives Alliance of North America to develop a Native American Midwifery organization.